


what is done in the shadows stays in the shadows

by supinetothestars



Category: Daredevil (Comics), Daredevil (TV), Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Human Disaster Matt Murdock, NaNoWriMo, So is Clint, They Get Along, Work In Progress, comics hawkeye is canon, daredevil netflix is canon, everyone loves kate bishop, except comics-only characters like kate, kate bishop is better than you, matts a dumbass, mishmash of comics and mcu, most other things are mcu, so far just introspection and shit but if i get responses i will expand, vigilante gossip circle, who are comics canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-22 14:51:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21303893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supinetothestars/pseuds/supinetothestars
Summary: Kate Bishop goes missing, and Clint goes to the only person he knows can help: Daredevil.Alternatively: Matt didn't plan on getting mixed up with Clint Barton's personal drama, but Kate Bishop is perhaps the one person universally beloved by nearly all of the vigilantes roaming New York City, so he didn't really have a choice.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Kate Bishop, Clint Barton & Matt Murdock, Kate Bishop & Matt Murdock
Comments: 9
Kudos: 42





	what is done in the shadows stays in the shadows

Night in New York City was a dimension free from the outside world. It itself seemed a living being, a city that buzzed with talk, thousands of people going about their everyday lives and never noticing that everyone else was doing the same. There were hundreds of little miracles that dotted these streets to be forgotten or treasured at one’s leisure.

For some, New York City was distinguished by its buildings, those rigid titans that loomed above the cold river that snaked around their roots. As the sky met the horizon the stars blended with the glimmering lights of the streets below, and nature became indistinguishable from humanity. It was a Da Vinci portrait of smudged dusky paint interrupted only by the smeared silver glint of the electric lights that kept it running.

But the  _ sound  _ was what defined the city, for Matt. The soundscape of New York was a matrix of activity, shifting but never changing, a landscape of noise that Matt had heard every second of every day for his entire life. Where the sight of the cityscape was singular in its stillness, its solemnity, the sounds of New York became miraculous in their constant reminder of life. Matt could hear the hum of a thousand buzzing exit lights, barking dogs, hushed conversations and professions of love. He could hear the solemn rush of the river drowned under the undertow of cars rushing down the city streets. He could hear a concert that made itself known in the sound of a thousand screaming voices, and he had to pause for a moment and listen just to be sure -- those were happy screams, not sad ones, and the difference was key. There was a buzzing like white noise as every person in the city went about their life blissfully ignorant of the other million. There was a man five streets over dying of cancer and a toddler who’d just met her father returning from war overseas for the first time and a cat with rabies who was slowly dying in a dumpster all the way across the city. If Matt wasn’t careful, if he disassociated too far, the ambience of his own life would become background noise to the symphony of the city.

It was easy to get overwhelmed in this constant flood of information. It was easy to forget which things were important and which were separated from him by lifetimes and would never come to matter in Matt’s own life.

There was something Foggy didn’t understand about why Matt did what he did, why he put himself in danger so often for people he’d never met: Matt had  _ perspective _ . Blind as he was, he had a view of the world around him in a way practically no one else did; he could hear an entire city moving at once, and to put himself first when he could hear the ambiance of a million lives seemed impossible in its selfishness. 

It was moments like this- perched on the roof of a desolate rooftop, feet planted on the other side of the short metal railing, tipping his head upwards into the bitingly cold wind- that reminded Matt what he did this for. Why he went out every night endangering life and limb to do this job that no sane citizen would do.

The rooftop behind him was being gently dusted by the wind, and he could hear leaves from a potted plant rustling. He could hear the empty sound where an echo would be, were he inside, but wasn’t. His hearing was clearer here, free of the echoes and reverberations of his office building and apartment. The open air gave him clarity in ways he couldn’t get while indoors, freed him from the fogged noises of everyday life that were all too familiar from his daytime job.

Matt stepped forward off the side of the roof and, for a moment, he was falling.

And then he was flying.

He caught himself on the fire escape and flipped onto the roof of another building. A running jump, and he was flying again, falling- he landed with a thud in an alley, but ran at the brick wall and used the bar of the fire escape to pull himself onto another roof. The flow of movement continued, and Matt made his way across the street in a haphazard, disjointed fashion.

Matt let his radar expand outwards again, moving his focus from beyond his immediate surroundings. There was an owl nested in a garage nearby, and a couple fighting in the safety of their home, and a man with a bow and arrow in the alley five streets over, aiming for the sky and firing arrow after arrow at the dusky clouds above. There was-

Matt’s movements were jerked to a stop as he stood on the edge of a two story building’s roof, and he swayed slightly, off balance from the sudden movement. He turned on his heel and rerouted. Matt knew only so many people who would bring a bow and arrow to the middle of Hell’s Kitchen, and none of them were people he wanted near his city.

Clint Barton was standing on the lid of a dumpster in an alley with his bow nocked. He was firing arrow after arrow at the sky. Matt had warned Barton many, many times, in increasingly violent ways, to stay the hell out of the Kitchen. Clint, evidently, hadn’t gotten the message.

Matt stepped off his fire escape and landed in the damp pavement of the alleyway. A pile of plastic garbage that had escaped from a nearby dumpster cracked under his heels. He gave Clint a death stare and didn’t beat around the bush. 

“Barton, I warned you. This neighborhood ain’t your turf. Go back to bed-stuy.”

“Thank God,” Clint responded, lowering his bow and stuffing the arrow he’d had nocked back into the quiver. “I thought you’d never show up. I hate wasting arrows with skyward shots. You know how expensive those things are, man? Avengers discount just doesn’t cover it.” 

Clint lowered his bow, but didn’t sling it over his shoulder. He was expecting trouble.

“You have business here, I’ll handle it.” Matt strode forward until he was a few feet away from Barton. “I don’t want you in my  _ city _ , Hawkeye. Get the hell  _ out _ .”

“It’s not a futzing city, man, it’s just a shitty neighborhood. Don’t get cocky.”

“Out.”

“I need your help.”

“I’m not joining the Avengers.” The answer was qued up in Matt’s muscle memory.

“And I ain’t asking you to.” Clint shifted position again. Fidgety, but his heart rate was steady. He wasn’t lying.

“I’m not helping you with any gang shit, either. You got allies for that. You got the kid for that.” Kate was twenty one, but still forever sixteen in the minds of all the NYC vigilantes who had known her in her early days of Young Avengers vigilantism.

“All the Avengers got busy, double D. Nat’s in Asia. Other West Coast ‘vengers off dealing with their own shit. And this job needs you, man. This is a job for you. I need help.”

Matt took a step forward. Clint didn’t step back. The tension was raised by a few inches. Clint was lowered by a few feet, as he jumped off the dumpster.

“I’m leaving this alley,” Matt told Clint in his deepest and darkest Daredevil voice. “I’m going to go do my goddamn job, Barton. I’ll be back here in ten minutes and if you’re still here I’ll make you leave by force.”

Matt swiveled on his heel and started to walk away, unclipping his batons again and twirling the rope around one hand as he prepared for a jump.

“You have kids?”

The hell kind of question is that, Barton. Matt stopped walking and the clubs fell limp in his hand.

“Take that as a no. Not many of us do. You have nieces? Nephews?”

Matt started walking again, slower. He widened his stance and started to pull back his arm, preparing to lasso the nearest fire escape with his baton.

“I do. A niece, that is. I mean, I, I have one.”

What?

“Sort of. Don’t tell her I said that. But the kid, she’s like family to me, you know? She grows on you. And thing is, she’s- Double D, you gotta help me out here, someone’s gotten ahold of her.”

Well shit, man.

That’s all you had to say.

Number one rule of the street-level vigilante: you don’t fuck with the little ones. Castle and Barnes get in a fight, rough each other up a bit? Fair game. Wade Wilson and Daredevil get drunk and angry one weekend and Daredevil snaps Wade’s arm so hard it looks like a broken slap ruler? Just vigilantes being vigilantes. No one gives a shit. But Wade takes a job to gun for Spider-Man? It had never happened. It hopefully never would. Vigilantes were hardasses and most of them hated all of the others with a passion. There wasn’t a code of conduct. But there was an unspoken rule held by every vigilante in NYC that you under no circumstances gunned for one of the young vigilantes. The moment she turns eighteen, you can kick Silk’s ass all the way to Canada and that’s her problem. But the young vigilantes are the future. They’re the next generation. You gotta keep them alive this far, and then when they’re older they can do your jobs for you and maybe you’ll even survive to retirement. It was a kind of investment. And maybe protective instincts were at play there, too. Even the darker figures to haunt the New York streets- Castle, Wilson- they never fucked with the kids. Elektra aimed to kill with pretty much anyone she met, but it was accepted knowledge that she didn’t aim to kill for the young vigilantes.

Kate Bishop wasn’t a child anymore. She was twenty one, and she had her own team set up all across the country. But Kate had an advantage in a way practically no one else did; she’d been in the vigilante game young. She’d been a member of the messy community of NYC heroes when she was a perky little teenager learning the steps of the game under Clint Barton’s not-so-watchful eye. She’d grown up in Barton’s shadow and come into her own over the course of her time as a hero in New York City, and while she’d moved on from the kind of work Barton did in the underground circles of New York, she was still widely considered one of the child vigilantes in the minds of most of NYC operatives. She’d done stints on a team, but what work she’d done as a vigilante was respected. 

Everyone in New York had a story about Kate Bishop. 

Matt’s was this: once, in a fight gone wrong, he’d been beaten half to death on a harbor overlooking the river, fighting a criminal highly trained in use of the hammer he was using to try and smash Matt’s head in. This very goal was what he was about to achieve when an arrow showed up out of the dusky New York mist and knocked the sledgehammer off its path and into the water. The criminal, seeing that he was disarmed, lunged at Matt and shoved him off the pier into the water.

Everything became a blur. Sounds become muffled and indistinct, as Matt tried to swim for the surface. He couldn’t tell which way was up. Matt had no idea how long he’d been underwater, only that he made out a resounding splash through the fuzzy roaring of the water, and the next thing he knew Kate Bishop was hauling him out of the river back to the air above.

Matt Murdock could care less if Barton himself had gotten himself into deep shit. Barton himself was deep shit; mess with him and you’ll be in over your head before you know it. (Ask Bobbi Morse, Natasha Romanoff, Jessica Drew- half the female supers in New York had stories to tell about Barton’s capital I Issues.) 

Kate Bishop was different. Kate was young. Kate hadn’t lost her youth and optimism for the vigilante job, and her whole personality created the kind of demeanor that you just  _ couldn’t _ not like. When she was younger, it had been naivete, but now that she understood the inner workings of a superhero job it was just a stunning resilience in the face of adversity. 

So Matt decided to hear Clint out, because Kate Bishop was worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> kudos and comments absolutely make my DAY and convince me to write more so please let me know what you thought of the story!


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